Our brains have an amazing ability to quickly work out the easiest way to do something. That’s why we always see the corners of grass trampled where people have consistently cut the corner to make their walk a little bit shorter. We do this all the time. It’s why we all need to be taught and reminded how to pick up a heavy object. We don’t want to bend our knees and lift it properly because that is slower and more cumbersome than just reaching down and picking it up with our arms, primarily using our back. Sometimes this little part of our mind makes life better and sometimes it causes aches and pains and is more trouble than it seemed it would be.
Today we want to draw your attention to this dynamic because it plays a significant role when we are making promises. Our tendency to cut corners can lead to wearing down our promises over time. That commitment to go for a walk everyday can turn into 5 walks a week and 2 days when you add up all the times you got up from your desk and called it “today’s walk.”
When you start to notice you’re “getting cute” with a promise, you know, like setting the timer to start a meditation while you are still reading incoming texts, ask yourself the question, what was the intention of my promise? Often, we’re so focused on not “breaking a promise” or “being bad” or “cheating,” that we don’t even give ourselves the opportunity to reevaluate the promise and recognize, I’m only doing 80% of what I promised. Was the promise too ambitious? Am I letting old habits rule my behavior? Is there a better promise for me to make? If we keep trying to squeeze “a pass” out of our promises, we often miss attending to what the true intention of the promise was.
To attending to the intention of out promise,
